


with your hands around my neck

by segs



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe, Assisted Suicide, Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 16:41:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/segs/pseuds/segs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendon kills people when they ask for it. That's his job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with your hands around my neck

**Author's Note:**

> there is no character death. this is a very weird and very fucked up little one-shot. written for grace fullywitches.

“Nobody meets by fate anymore,” he says, his hands closed around a cigarette as sparks fly from the lighter he found on the ground. “Damn shame.”

“What?” Ryan says, because it doesn’t make sense. He hates when Brendon does that. Like he’s trying to come off cool and aloof on purpose, when he’s really just a kid hunched underneath a streetlight at three in the morning, no air of mystery there. Ryan has him all figured out.

“In all the books.” Finally the cigarette lights but Brendon doesn’t smoke it. Just holds it between his index finger and thumb, looking at the cherry that glows red. “And movies and stuff. No one ever meets by fate anymore.”

Ryan doesn’t know how to ask Brendon to come back into the room with him. The sheets aren’t cool yet and there are hours to go before the sun rises. Miles to go before they sleep. “Fate is overplayed and cliche.” 

“Not anymore,” Brendon argues. “It used to be. It was too romantic, so everyone wanted to be cool and different and started saying things like, ‘We met by coincidence.’” His voice goes into a mocking boom. “Everyone wants to say that meeting by coincidence is more ironic and romantic. I miss when people met by fate.”

“We met by coincidence,” Ryan says, inching closer to the door. 

“No.” Brendon shakes his head and finally decides to let the cigarette fall. “I think it was fate.”

...

Brendon kills people when they ask for it. That’s his job. Ryan says it’s a weird job, and he’s not wrong. Brendon laughs, tucks his chin into his hands, that winning smile, and says, “It pays the bills.”

“One way of looking at it.” 

People want to die. It happens all the time. And people are afraid of dying, too. That’s something that doesn’t mix. The wanting of death and the fear of it. So Brendon. 

“They pay me to be kind.” Brendon’s fingertips run down the jutting knobs of Ryan’s spine, and he kisses him somewhere between his neck and his jaw, and Ryan has his elbows supporting his weight over Brendon’s body, a seemingly endless expanse of warm, soft skin and angles and curves.

“They pay you because they want to die.” There’s a difference.

“Death should be kind,” Brendon says, with an air of finality, like that ends the conversation. He has a warmth in his eyes when Ryan presses their foreheads together, and Ryan wonders, again, for neither the first or last time, what dying by his hands would be like.

...

They meet in the summer. There’s a small town just outside of Las Vegas that gets swallowed up in the sand and dirt, with one bar, one motel, and a dozen or so houses scattered around. Like ants on a hill. 

Ryan is there because he doesn’t want to be home. Brendon is there because there’s someone who wants to die. That’s when they meet, anyway, and it’s half past midnight, the moon hanging low, something eerie in the quiet, and Ryan is smoking outside the motel thinking maybe he should go home now, maybe, and Brendon is quiet on the other side of the hall.

“Hey,” he says, and as hard as Ryan tries to think back, he can’t remember seeing blood on Brendon’s hands. 

“Hi.” The cigarette withers to a stub in between his fingers. 

And it happens quickly, like a cutscene after a fade-to-black, and Ryan is inside him and Brendon’s bottom lip is swollen and red, and the windowpane is filthy with sand but the streetlamp outside is orange and the room is full of the light, and Brendon keeps saying something, saying something.

Ryan doesn’t remember what he said, but he remembers covering Brendon’s mouth with one hand, the bed frame rhythmically hitting the wall, when Brendon comes.

...

Ryan is uninspired. His professor keeps saying his writing lacks depth, that it’s all fancy words and thesaurus entries but no heart, no soul. He doesn’t know what that means, or how to fix it. He gets a C- on his favorite prose. There’s nowhere to go but up.

Brendon doesn’t seem to have a place of his own because he likes to show up to Ryan’s tiny studio unannounced. He’s there when Ryan leaves for class and he’s there when Ryan gets back. He keeps saying sorry. Ryan wonders what it’s like to kill for a living. Maybe he could write about that.

“How much money do they pay you?” he asks. 

Brendon’s hand stills on his thigh. He chews on the inside of his cheek. “It depends.” 

“On what?”

Brendon keeps looking anywhere but right at Ryan, and settles to letting his hand drift up and up and up. The heel of his palm rocks into Ryan’s crotch. He says, “On how I kill them. How long they want me to be kind to them.”

His body responds automatically like it always does and there’s something sick in the bottom of his stomach that he doesn’t want to think about or acknowledge. “If they pay you so much, why are you always here? Where does the money go?”

“It goes,” Brendon says, popping the button on Ryan’s jeans, sliding the zipper down, and Ryan closes his eyes, tries to think of anything but Brendon killing, sinking a knife into someone’s chest, a pistol to their temple, anything, anything...

He’s still hard when Brendon’s mouth closes on the tip and there’s something wrong with him but he can’t put a name to it. He doesn’t ask anymore.

...

“Tell me I changed your life.”

“You changed my life.”

Brendon laughs. He has a laugh that could light up the whole room. “Tell me again.”

“You ruined my life.”

“Again.”

...

Ryan comes home to Brendon. That’s how the story goes. The chapter starts with Brendon making fried eggs in the kitchen, and Ryan says, “I wanted to die before I met you.”

Brendon laughs. Like it’s funny, maybe, or like he’s heard it all before. “You could’ve called me for that.”

“It’s not funny.”

“No,” Brendon decides, after a pause. “Not funny.”

When Brendon kisses him, it’s sickly sweet, like honey and sugar. He says, “I won’t let you die. Too many people die around me.” Like it’s an accident. Like it just seems to happen. 

Ryan doesn’t want to think about the blood on Brendon’s hands but it happens inevitably. Of course it does. “It doesn’t count if they pay you.”

“Semantics,” Brendon says, and laughs, clear as a bell, a short sound full of light, and Ryan wants to kiss the laughter until it’s all that’s left. It’s all he wants to hear for as long as he lives, just that sound, the smell of fried eggs, the taste of honey and sugar.

“I want you around for as long as you live.”

Brendon smiles, small and secret. “As long as I live.”

...

The first “I love you” sounds like an apology. Ryan doesn’t say it back. Brendon keeps breathing in sharply, biting down on his lip, his tiny gasps and sounds like a chorus, and then he whispers the three words, the eight letters, and Ryan bites down on his shoulder and feels sparks behind his eyes when he comes.

The second “I love you” sounds like a question. Ryan doesn’t know how to answer it. 

...

“Where does the money go, Brendon?”

“My family. When they need it. They think I’m in real estate.”

He still tastes sweet.

...

“I love you,” Ryan says. “I’ll love you until it kills me.”

“Only if you ask.”

And he laughs.


End file.
